


They Tell A Story

by TheEyeofTheOncomingStorm



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate Scars AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, allusions to rene dubois
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7671811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEyeofTheOncomingStorm/pseuds/TheEyeofTheOncomingStorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on Yeoyou's Illusion of freedom. Soulmate AU. Jack's POV. It goes a little further back into his history than Yeoyou's does for Phryne.</p><p>"Jack wondered a lot about his soulmate, ever since he was old enough to understand... Once the scars start appearing, there was a new one almost weekly. Scraped knees and elbows, a scratch along his hairline, and a rather scary looking one on his foot. He worries about her a lot."</p><p>FIRST CHAPTER ReEDITED MAY 7, 2018</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Illusion of Freedom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6580138) by [Yeoyou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeoyou/pseuds/Yeoyou). 



> “Scars show us where we have been, they do not dictate where we are going.”  
> ― David Rossi

Jack wondered a lot about his soulmate, ever since he was old enough to understand. His parents didn’t marry because they were soulmates. They bore different scars. They still loved each other. He knew they did. But ultimately, he believed that if you were meant to be with someone, then you should be together.

Once the scars start appearing, there was a new one almost weekly. Scraped knees and elbows, a scratch along his hairline, and a rather scary looking one on his foot. He worries about her a lot.

Coin collections and bicycles and Buffalo Bill and grand adventure stories from Uncle Ted influence his dreams. He wants to be a sheriff, but his mother tells him there are no sheriffs in Victoria. So he settles on Detective Inspector. He wins his first bicycle race with the neighbor boy, and sets his sights even higher. He wants to win the Tour de France.

The frequency of scars lessens as he gets older. The still appear, however. Nicks and burns on his fingers (probably from cooking, his mother had scars like that), one long shallow on his arm, and one giant scrape across his shin, as if she’d fallen out of a tree. A week later, there are more scars on his shins, same as the first. Whoever she is, she’s stubborn. He admires her for it.

When he earns a scholarship by winning a bicycle race, his parents convince him to get an education before becoming a police officer and goes to university. He meets a girl. She’s nice enough. But he know she’s not his soulmate. She knows he’s not hers either. He still sees Rosie, when he can.

He decides that he doesn’t want to go to university anymore and enrolls in the police academy. He and Rosie are still friends. But he doesn’t want to wait anymore for someone to share his life with. So they talk. And they have fun together. And when he asks her to marry him, she says yes.

His mother had told him that marriage was a partnership, and it took work. Two people who were supposedly meant to be together wasn’t enough. It took actual work. It made Jack wonder if there was any point to true love if people could just marry whoever they wanted and everything would still work out.

They’re happy enough, being married. Some people scoff at them, neither one the other’s soulmate. But most people don’t care. Jack graduates at the top of his classes at the academy and with some convincing from his father-in-law, he winds up a constable at City South. Until he’s shipped off to war.

Throughout the war, he’s surprised that he walks away relatively unharmed. Only one scar of his own, and none of hers. He’s grateful. He hopes that she’s somewhere safe, like Rosie back in Melbourne. He doesn’t want her in the middle of this war, but somehow he knows that she is.

After he gets home, different scars start appearing. A cut on his lip, a cigarette burn on one arm, one long deep scratch across his back. He wishes he knew who or where she was. Maybe he could help her. But he doesn’t know where to start. So he just waits, and prays for her with each new scar.

Years pass. His job survives the 1923 police strike. He’s offered a promotion and a raise. He moves up to Detective Inspector. Most of his scars have started fade (and hers as well). Some new ones appear. Small, insignificant ones that tell him nothing. Just that she’s still alive. But his heart warms at the thought.

He’s offered a better position with more money. Chief Inspector, a desk job. He turns it down. He’s good at what he does, so the commissioner doesn’t push the subject. The scars stop showing up. No more scars to tell him her story, to tell him she’s still around. He wonders if she died. He wonders if he should grieve for her, a woman he never even met. A woman who he now may never get the chance to meet.

Life after the war is hard, and even harder for those for whom the battle still rages in their mind. He thought got off relatively lightly, but more than once he's woken up outside in his pajamas, running from mortar shells and bullets. More than once, Rosie tells him, that he's shouted in his sleep. Names, orders, pleas for god to spare their lives. It's a cost of war no one accounted for. No one gets medals for shell-shock.

He's not the same man who went to war, and they both knows it. But she doesn't know how deep it goes. God willing, she never will. The further apart he and Rosie grow, the more involved he gets in his work. After all, the more sleepless night he spends at work, the less opportunity he has to disturb her. He knows it isn’t fair, but he doesn’t know what to do anymore. So work becomes his life, even more so after Rosie goes to “visit” her sister.

He regrets his decision to remain a DI soon after he meets Miss Fisher. She’s infuriatingly clever and bright and very beautiful. But as he gets to know he better he begins to appreciate her wit. Her charm. Her intelligence. Her “self-styled” detective work carries more weight with him than he’d ever let on.

Her recklessness will be the death of him, he decides, on their second case together as he fires upon her would-be assassins. She scolds him for ruining her stockings. It isn’t until after he gets home that evening and starts dressing for bed that he realizes that he has a new set of scars on his knees.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal."  
> \- Leonard Cohen

He isn't sure what to say. He wonders if he should say anything at all. Phryne has forged her own way in life, and is quite independent. She might reject him, or worse, avoid him. Leave and take her life back to England. Or India. Or Morocco. Besides which, he is still married. He may not be in love with her anymore, but he'd too fond of Rosie to hurt her like that.

So he says nothing. He can only be there, keep her from getting killed. Keeps her safe. Keeps her close. Protect her from herself. In the name of chivalry, of course.

They joke. They flirt. But then, she flirts with everyone. He tries to manage her interference in his cases, but it's difficult when she brings the cases to him. They become close, closer than what might be proper. But he stopped caring about appearances long ago. 

Phryne tells him about the affair between the murdered man and the bookshop keeper. Two lonely people, brought together over shared interests, and something sparked between them. It happens, she says. He knows it does. But it can't happen for them. As dearly as he wants it to.

When she steps in between him and the cobbler, he's terrified. He cannot fathom a life without her in it, a life where he must carry the scars that killed her. Later, he wonders if she really knew that the gun was empty, or if it was luck, a guess. Then he tries to forget about it altogether, because it hurts too much to think about what might have been.

A marriage is still a marriage, he says. He tries to tell her, in so many words, that he wishes he could be with her, but cannot. That they are meant to be, but like Saul and his lover, they are lost to each other, even before they met. Maybe forever. He drinks to missed opportunities. 

On stage, for the first time in a long time. Only from the wings, but it feels good. Operettas aren't his favorite, but he knows this one well, and the opportunity to see Phryne act the part of a lovesick girl is too good to pass up. But the near accident with the sandbag shakes them both, ever more so after he finds out it's not an accident. It sickens him that this was planned, that this was somehow different than the other times she'd almost died. 

When they meet Lin Chung in the street outside the theater and Miss Fisher leaves with him, he feels hurt. Displaced. He knows it makes no sense. He has told her nothing, so has has no right to sit in judgement of her choice of companions. Not that it stops him. 

He disapproves of Mr. Lin. Something about the man unnerved him. Perhaps it was the way she looked at him, and so easily left him behind. Maybe it was the knowledge of what would transpire between them later that night. He tries not to let it bother him. She doesn't know, or she wouldn’t flaunt her dalliances in front of her. She was too well mannered for that.

As they try to catch Rene Dubois, he discovers more about Phryne's past than he bargained for. She doesn't say so in as many words, but he has enough of the pieces to put them together, and a sad picture emerges. He remembers how he prayed for her safety then, the only time he prayed after the war. Now they sit in Cafe Réplique, and she's terrified. He tries to distract her, to make her feel more at ease. But the moment Rene enters the room, it's as if she knows even before he does.

He wants nothing more than for someone, anyone to put a bullet through the man's skull, but not if it means Phryne's life. Rene deserves to pay for the hell he inflicted on these two women. And ultimately, he does.

He does what he can to protect her friend, Veronique. His report said that it was an accident, and everyone who saw will testify to that. A convenient accident, the Chief Inspector comments, but says nothing else, and allow him to take custody of "woman with peignoir", and he drives straight to Wardlow.

He blushes as he realises that she was the model for the painting, when she was nineteen. It's not the way he'd thought he'd see her that... intimately for the first time, and it makes him embarrassed. But Phryne takes it in her stride. He marvels at her for that, after his embarrassment fades. She carries no shame with her. Not for her nudity, or for what she had to do to survive, or for whatever happened with Rene, then or now.

She pokes fun at him for blushing, and tries to talk about the Kiss. They need to, he knows. But he's not ready. He makes his excuses, and leaves. He's grateful that she doesn't force the issue too much.

It's weeks till they see each other again, and it's not completely by accident. He's afraid that he'd said too much with the kiss, if her reaction was anything to go by. He's not sure when she realises, but he knows for sure now. That she knows. He waits for her to make the next move to say something. To hopefully say those two words. Soul mate.

He knows that the next move must come from her. So he waits. And wonders.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first MFMM fanfic (well at least the first one I've posted.) I hope you enjoyed it. I don't know if I will write anymore in this story. I want to but I'm having a hard time getting the words down on paper.


End file.
